Halloween!

I become a monster when I fail to recognize how little I know.  If I am not on a spiritual path daily, then I tend to be unable to "differentiate the true from the false."  This would be a form of insanity and I exhibit such insanity by making judgments about reality, your reality.  I judge others to be bad people, deeply flawed, overflowing with bad habits, or at least one bad habit that bugs my program for personal happiness.  But as someone said, "I don't know what I don't know."  I make judgments.  I categorize people as flawed, that is, flawed way more than I am.  But, when I am in a fit spiritual condition, I may have opinions pop up in my mind, or feelings well up, that are disconcerting, but I keep my mouth shut.  How I have been saved by silence!  In time, I am surprised to find out the goodness of people that was not so apparent to me in my monster state.  It can be a fine line between charitable critiquing and being a monster.  I have trouble finding that line.  But such is the life of a monster.  Happy Halloween!

Outside Honor

Worship is a way, and a rather easy one, to honor your God on the outside, your outsides.  A Buddhist can honor Buddha and one another by sitting in meditation.  Outside stuff.  But it seems to me that the wisdom teachings speak about the harder way to honor, and that is: change your insides.  Say what?  Well, in my religion, Jesus says, "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' but not do what I command?"  Spiritual paths, be there a God, or Gods or not, are fundamentally about changing one's life from self-centered to other-centered.  It is all about love.  I see a loving manner in people who say they don't believe, whereas I see an unloving manner in many people who say they do believe and worship.  I try to do both, but the harder way is the interior way.  

Hangovers

Not all hangovers are substance caused.   Some are of the emotional type.  After a big emotional turmoil, there is usually an emotional hangover.  Energy sapped.  Numbness.  The promise to not let that happen again.  But a promise is not a plan.  A plan takes work and often work with others.  A promise you make to yourself and it is filled with empty hope but no plan.  No action will be taken with a promise.  Couples promise themselves in marriage or partnership. I promised in ordination.  But without a plan of action, a promise is a lot of emotion and wishful thinking and fantasy.  You gotta work at it on a daily basis.  I thought, "Oh, I am now a priest, and everything will go well."  That was magical thinking.  My life is not a mess today, but I have a plan.  I have to renew that plan each day with action.  Otherwise?  The mess returns and picks up where it left off.  

Train Station

Spiritual journeys are a bit like waiting at a train station for a train to come.  You are not sure when it will come though you have heard that a train will stop if it sees you waiting.  The train passes by if it sees no one waiting at the station.  So the important thing is to wait.  Show up on a regular basis and be still.  Wait.  You cannot control the train, but you can control your waiting.  The more often you wait or the longer you wait, the more likely the train will come along, pick you up and take you to places you have not been.  The spiritual power is the train.  The station is where you wait in stillness and silence, with hope, faith, but not control.  You don't control the prayer, the mediation.  But you will get nowhere unless you show up.  Some have said it works like that is sobriety.  You are lucky that the sobriety train stopped to pick you up. But you have to stay on the sobriety train.  If you get off, it may not stop at your station next time you want it to.  Once found, don't take the spiritual journey for granted.  

Voting

I always vote by mail in, or drop off ballot or vote at the election board a few weeks before the election.  I am never at my voting address when election day comes around.  This time I will be in a monastery in the mountains of Colorado.  I was at my voting address for a day last month so I went to pick up a ballot to take with me.  I have time to sit and look at the issues, fewer things to vote on this year with Covid.  If I don't understand some measure, a bond issue, or local candidate choice, I can ask someone who might know.  I take voting seriously because I know that some of my blog readers live in countries where there are no real election choices, or it is very difficult to vote at all.  It is a privilege for me to be able to vote.  I vote in mid-term elections too because there are always House of Representative choices as they have two year terms.  School board, city council and judges are always the hardest.  If I absolutely remain clueless on an issue then I leave it blank.  All any of us can do is the best we can do.  

The Whole Mind

 Yesterday I gave a sermon on the Great Commandment, which is basically love God with all you got and love your neighbor too.  Well I don’t do either.  You might have my problem.  I cannot love God with my whole mind, because my mind is filled up with resentments, complaining thoughts and judgments about the behaviors of other people.  Like what?  Well for years, 48 I believe, I have lived in community with men.  They lack the perfection I think they ought to have.  They use up the last of some food and never write anything on a grocery list.  They use up the last tissue and leave the box empty instead of going to get a replacement.  They don’t screw the lid on properly on a jar.  I have picked up jars by the lid and the whole jar crashed on the floor while I held nothing but the lid.  They don’t wrap food properly so as to keep it from spoiling in storage.  So God gets only a “piece of my mind,” and that piece is complaining that God does not shape up these people.  Imperfection reigns in shopping, on the street, in traffic, at work and so on.  But a friend of mine reminded me that “perfection” is a concept.  It is not reality.  The real is human and it is imperfect.  So I am learning acceptance.  I am learning to see humans as a Grace for me.  They are a check on myself.  How am I doing in communal living?  Am I loving or muttering?  I cannot change anyone else and am not in this world to change others.  I am here to be changed.  So I try and practice silent tongue and still mind.  In prayer and around the house I work on this.  I want to give God my whole mind, heart, and all my inner self.  I want to be happy joyous and free!  How about you?

Not Complicated

The spiritual life, as some have said, is not complicated, but it is difficult.  It is not complicated because it has few parts, but it is difficult because we tend to make mistakes in the few parts.  You don't have to believe in a god to have a spiritual life, though I have found it helps me.  Simply don't pay attention to our mind/imagination/thoughts, and have no goal such as being comforted or feeling good whatever feeling good is to you.  Basically ignore yourself in your head and have no goal in any effort.  Stop being busy. You sit, walk slowly, lie down and ignore you.  The difficulty is that we cannot seem to stop, sit, and ignore ourself for any while.  So what!  Try again.  Keep trying on a daily basis and you will get the hang of it.  What is so spiritual about ignoring you?  The "YOU" that is constantly focused upon is always surface, and somewhat fleeting in agenda.  There is a deeper you that simply waits for an opening to reveal itself.  There is a power there in the deeper you that will make you a better person in nonmaterial ways.  That would be the "spiritual life."  

The Feast

 I like having routines in my day because then I don’t have to spend a lot of time reinventing a schedule.  It allows me to concentrate on prayer in the routine.  Think of when you go on a holiday or tour.  You are out of your routine and find that you spend what was your prayer time and energy on figuring out and planning your day, your schedule for new events, places and times to eat and so on.  You pray less on these excursions.  So prayer is like a feast to which you are invited.  Someone else has planned the meal, set the table, cooked and served.  That is like routine.  All you have to do is show up and enjoy the feast of food.  If you were the cook and host, you would be concerned with many things, like on a vacation.  Make prayer the feast of spiritual food that it can be.  Have daily routines.  It works for me.  

Filler Upper

Why do many people in their 20s want something big and exciting to happen in their life?  I suggest that it might be because they are empty inside and this is the "Filler Upper" whatever the exciting thing is they are looking for.  It might be marriage, a career move, an advanced degree, falling in love, or LSD, or whatever they ingest nowadays.  When I was in my 20s I did not know I was empty on the insides.  I was "unfulfilled" maybe, or sometimes bored, or thought my life meaningless, but it did not occur to me that outside stuff would not fill the inside.  I entered seminary/religious life when I was 29.  This was my ticket to happiness!  Wrong, but sometimes, we make a good decision but for a wrong reason.  It was the best I could do to fix me.  It did not fix me.  But God works with whatever we give God and so I stumbled along being of some use to others.  Fortunately, no big deal was made of my ordination by my group. There were 9 of us, too many to focus all the attention on any one or two like we do today.  Plus, I don't think anyone from my parish came to the ordination.  My homilies were kind of fluff, though kids liked them.  I could aways connect with kids, maybe because I had not grown up yet.  But eventually, I spoke three of the best words ever and it was a miracle.  I NEED HELP!  And help came to me.  Today, I still stay in touch with help.  I am not doing life under my own power.  And kids still like my homilies, though they will have to come to a monastery now to hear them.  

Research

 Research is something that we do when we are trying to deal with our problems as we see them.  We experiment in our research to find more peace, happiness, less loneliness, and sadness.  We experiment with people, jobs, places where we live, as in moving from one place to another, education degrees, buying stuff, drugs, alcohol, sex and food. It is all research on the outsides and it never works to fill us up.  Why?  The problem is not with the outsides.  It is on the insides.  It is ME!  I am the problem that I am trying to avoid.  Well, if this is so, then how do I begin to shift from outside stuff to work in my insides? I think willingness is a start.  I won't do anything if I am not willing.  How does one become willing?  For most, it is a case of desperation.  One becomes willing to work on the insides instead of killing themselves, which is what they were doing, slowly, with their outside solutions.  Once you are willing, all kinds of outside help presents itself to give us the courage to work on the insides, one day at a time.  Friends of mine have found it so, and they taught me.  

The Time

 In the Book of the Bible, in my Bible, called Ecclesiastes, in Chapter three, it talks about the right time for everything.  Everything has a time.  There is a time to be silent and a time to speak.  It fits me.  I have spoken, or spoken too much, when it was not my time.  I either get ignored or the subject gets changed.  I have spoken when my opinion had not the silence to be sufficiently thought out.  Now, in the monastery, I find it is time to be silent.  Not 24 hour a day hermit silent, but it is a time for me, a good time for me, to be more silent.  As we enter into the winter months here in the mountains, it does seem to quiet down overall in the monastery.  Of course, Covid helps, as we have no visitors.  I can still do Zoom talks from my monastery.  Has the Coronavirus given you a time for silence that fits you at this point in your spiritual program?

Strange Maxims

 Well, Ladies, Girls, Women, what say you about some maxims, true or false.  First, in this country a maxim is that a girl who does not like sports has eliminated half the population for marriage.   Men who like sports avoid women who don't like sports.  But a second maxim is that if the woman can cook then the sport man likes her because he can watch sports while she cooks.  Do any of my women blog readers have experience with this?  But to go on, what if a woman likes sports. Does she find a non-sport man an attractive marriage partner?  And what if he cannot cook either?  Are cooking and sports grounds for annulment?  I am a priest of unfathomable ignorance in these areas.  What say the ladies?  Is this all crazy?  

Like A Stream

 There is a proverb that says a good heart is like a stream that in the hand of God can be moved in whatever direction God chooses.  I like that image.  The stream follows the contour of the land.  The only time it breaks away is when there is an earthquake or a major deluge of rain.  The earthquake reforms the banks of the stream and the rain causes the water to over flow the banks.  To stay a stream in God's hand I must not let the little things of life become earthquakes or deluges.  I must keep some emotional equilibrium.  Some circles would call it emotional sobriety.  My will always overflows God's will when I am afraid, angry, judgmental because of what someone did in relation to me, and resentful over and over.  Then I become like destructive waters.  So I need to practice a spiritual program of some silence and stillness each day.  If not, then my heart becomes like a flying kite that is attached to nothing.  It just goes hither and yon, singular and isolated from anything and anyone.  

Zoom Look

 Why do you worry what you will look like on zoom video?  I suppose if you are trying to sell a product you want to look good so as to enhance whatever you are selling.  If you are trying to teach about spiritual growth but you look like a wreck then people might think you don’t look very spiritual.  Yikes!  That’s me. OK, I used to worry about what I looked like on screen, but then I realized I did not have much to work with. Upon further reflection I realized that it is a lot about vanity and what people might think of me.  Well, people are not thinking much about me or how I look.  That is just my grandiose projection.  People don’t pay as much attention to us as we might think.  And vanity is all about a self-rating system.  Compare and contrast.  Be happy you are alive and have wi if to connect with he outside world, far and wide.  And let us not make judgments about how other people look on screen.  

Over-Talk

 I wonder if the reason that so many Catholic grade school children drop out of the church or drift off from sacraments, is because they experienced their religion as over-verbalized and under-experienced.  They parade into the school mass, go to assigned seats, with their teacher’s eye balls on the back of their neck, and act attentive, or else.  Then they hear lots of words about stuff, God, Jesus, Church, Rules, Doctrine, but experience in the heart not so much.  My best experiences of God always seemed to come when I searched and usually alone rather than with any group.  If not alone, then in more singular moments, the hoped for but unexpected experience.  It would happen when I would visit a quiet church or walk in a wood, or park.  Maybe a moment when I was serving mass as a altar boy, a quiet, weekday mass without fanfare.  The monastery has so many of these quiet, singular moments.  Or a one on one encounter with another person, maybe when I would go to anoint a sick/dying person and no one was around to watch.  Experiences can never be coerced.  

Pleasure

 I had been asking myself what is my purpose here in the monastery?  Why all this centered meditation, this deep prayer?  Where is it supposed to take me?  In other words, what is God’s plan?  What is the work down the road?  All for naught, this wondering and wandering in mind.  I realize that I am here in prayer to give God pleasure.  It is not about getting spiritually fortified so that I can go on to do some work later for humankind or the Church.  That would be a work that would give me pleasure by its accomplishment.  It would be ego satisfying and therefore a bit about Self.  But to pray simply to give God pleasure is a more selfless life.  Even if I might at times feel dry in prayer, or it seems tedious, that is just from my side.  It is still giving God pleasure and that is always a sufficient reason to pray.  

Is To Ought

I try to live a spiritual life that will bring me from what I am to what I ought to be, or from is to ought.  I don't mean ought in a guilt-ridden sense, but in the sense of becoming what my unique gifts and talents call me to be, the individual God created.  Potential is just that until you live it.  When I look at the practices of other religions that is what I ask.  Not so much is it true in dogma and doctrine.  What do they do?  What do they practice that brings them from is to ought?  I ask this of course from my own religion.  I can get stuck in safe routines, staying in a comfort zone.  Many a believer looks for just such a parish to call their own.  They like the safe routines and not being asked to do things that challenge their comfort zones.  They want their faith and practice to have a certainty, which of course is neither faith nor very challenging toward growth.   They would be upset if the mass schedule changed.   In this Coronavirus time our routines have changed.  So ask yourself what can you do or learn from this that will move you from is to ought.  The virus has messed up the "IS."  But not the "OUGHT."

Living To Being

When we die we cease living but we do not cease being.  Living is all about this earth which is why we should be concerned with it and with one another.  The Hebrew scriptures are about living well in this life.  A lot of people of religion today focus on God and themselves but are not much concerned about God's creation, which is God's joy.  It is a private religion bent on getting to heaven where they will live the good life forever.  But living is for here.  After we die, we cease to live.  We can not make the world a better place after we die.  But we do go on being.  We don't cease to exist.  But being is not the same as living so I drop the idea of a better version of myself in heaven.  So can we access some sense of "being" here while we live?  I think so and I suggest it is in a more contemplative life, those moments when we say, "I just am" or maybe the prayer is so deep we are not even aware of that.  If you cannot just be with yourself then how are you going to "be" after you die?  The constant demand for diversion, entertainment, activity certainly does not prepare us to "BE."  But while I live I will try to be concerned about God's creation including other people.   

Columbus Day

Yesterday was Columbus Day.  It made little impression on most of you, unless of course you are Canadian, because it was Thanksgiving Day.  For the rest of us it was work as usual, or whatever usual is in Covid times.  Not so when I was a little boy in Catholic School in the Bronx.  Columbus Day was a day off from school.  I was made for play and treats, not learning.  So I loved Columbus as did my schoolmates.  The nuns got the day off too so they could pray more and be quiet in their semi-cloistered life.  And not be bothered by a class of 65 hoodlum-to-be-boys.  The best thing about Catholic school was the days off.  Public schools were in session.  So we Papists got the parks and ball-fields to ourselves.  Plus, we got out early one afternoon a week so that our classrooms could be used by the Catholics in public school for their catechism.  Of course, they had little chance of going straight to heaven, what little catechism they learned.  Well, the Catholic church is struggling now, but that is what it gets for relying on kids like me to be the future.  And New York City had parades too!  There was a Columbus Day parade so I guess a lot of adult Catholics were off too so they could march.  It was all so much fun before the historians revisited Christopher and he has taken a big hit in the last few years.  And for Catholic kids, it is just another day at school.  

Heart Open

 A lot of people like their religion to be clear.  Clarity of mind gives such people great comfort.  That is why they focus on catechisms, doctrine and dogma.  In my religion they have catechism answers to who Jesus is.  But this does not mean they have open hearts.  Why?  Because for many a clear-minded believer Jesus looks just like they do.  If I remind them that he was Jewish, probably brown skinned, a rather noticeable nose, and probably short, they would say no, that is not Jesus, unless of course, that is exactly their profile.  We tend to define God to suit ourselves, do we not?  God has little room to be God in our clear-headed thinking.  Lots of people in my church say they long for Christ, but that does not mean that they would accept him should he show up.  Should I ever see God, I suspect it will be a big surprise.  

Looking Back

 It is a great gift to be able to look back without regret about something I did.  Why?  My past might be helpful to someone who has not yet done whatever it is that I did.  They might be in a similar situation that is the same as mine was in my past.  If I can share with them my experience, it might be helpful to them so they do not make the same mistake or do the bad behavior that I did.  But if I regret the past, still filled with shame and guilt and any other painful feelings, I may not want to share it, and therefore will not be a possible help to this other person.  Some of my past is still wrong, a mistake, a bad thing but I don't have live in perpetual misery over it.  I cannot change it.  So I have learned to deal with my past and get it to where the negative can be a positive from my experience for someone else, maybe a younger person.  My past, the good, the bad, and the ugly, have made me what I am today.  What I am today is totally insufficient and useless for some people, but that is not my side of the street.  Maybe this blog helps someone.  

Do Better Prayer

I find that a lot of time I praise God in Choir song and then ask for stuff, as if I am deprived of something.  I call this prayer, "God you are good (praise), now please do better."  All summer I have been praying for rain and complaining that we are in a drought.  I forget that we do indeed have water and are not in danger of burning down.  This came to me when we received a letter from an Abbot, about the situation at the monastery in Oregon.  One, they are five miles from two fires.  Two, they have no water.  It is not that they lack water.  They have no water.  They have to bring in tankards of it, and that is $$$.  Apparently, over the years, vineyards were planted around their property and the vineyards used highly technical equipment to dig deep into the aquifer and get the water that used to go to the monastery.  Never once, all summer, did I thank God for the water we do have to eat, wash, drink and water some of our fields.  So I am going to try and stop the "God, do better " prayers and thank God for what I do have.  I think it is OK to ask for stuff, but maybe do the thank you list first.   

Take The Body

 Action goes before thought in many a good circumstance.  For instance, if I think about exercising I won't do it or will postpone it until my mind gets around to a "yes".  So I just exercise.  I don't think about it.  After the exercise I feel good and the mind then says, "Oh, this is a good idea."  Sit down to study.  Don't think about studying.  Don't think about visiting the dentist or doctor.  Call and make an appointment.  Then the mind will be glad that the body did the action. Call a friend.  Don't think about it. In bad things, it is the opposite.  If you act first, have "just one drink" and then think about it later, much later, for too many of us, you will regret action before thinking.  My mind seems to know many bad things and avoids them, though not all.  But for good things, my mind needs to deliberate, endlessly, even if it will finally decide for a "YES!"  By then it might be too late for the good thing.  

Time

One monk said that what we give God is our time.  Time is the common denominator that each monk gifts to God in their belief system.  Some monks meditate more, some work more, some read more than other monks and so on.  But they all give the one gift that each of them share: time.  Time is not ours, but is really a gift.  Suicide cuts the gift short, as does poverty,  addiction and loneliness.  But wealth does not guarantee anything.  So the vocation of the monk is to give their God time as a very basic gift.  Whatever time they will have left on this earth, they will live it in their individual ways in a monastery.  So I don't think so much about how I am using my time, but rather that it is given to God here in this place for however long I am here.  And how about you who are not a monk?  Time is your received gift.  To whom and how do you give it as a gift?  "I have no time for you, or this/that," is a phrase we often hear and can cut deeply if someone won't give us any time.  How much time for a spiritual practice? Connecting with friends and family? Physical activity and sleep?  And so it goes.  Knowing that God has all my time here, I do not fret about wasting time. 

Feeling Invisible

If you feel ignored, invisible, or overlooked, my religion might be just right for you.  There is a story where a fellow named Nathanael, out of curiosity, comes from sitting under a tree, and approaches Jesus in another part of town.  Jesus says that he saw Nathanael sitting under the fig tree.  But Jesus was no where in sight of the tree or Nathanael when he was sitting under it.  Well, this gets Nathanael's attention and he begins to follow Jesus.  Why? Maybe because Nathanael, like many of us, was feeling ignored and invisible to the world around him.  Jesus is saying you are never invisible or ignored by Jesus.  Now if Jesus is truly Risen and Alive, as Christians believe, then you are never invisible or unimportant to him.  You are never nobody to Jesus in my religion.  I keep this in mind during these Covid times of separation and living at a monastery.  Sometimes I wonder if I have been forgotten by the world out there.  Certainly I am ignored.  Who bothers to think about a guy living in a mountain monastery.  We all have other more pressing issues.  But I know that Jesus is with me.  Of course, when I am bad, this can be a problem.  So I had better be good.  

Care Packages

 Someone asked for my address for care packages to "Heal" my wound.  Eureka!  My wounded nose will be lightly pressed to the window pane looking for the UPS or Fed Ex truck. The address is: Terry Ryan, St. Benedict's Monastery, 1012 Monastery Road, Snowmass, CO 81654.  Am I shameless? Apparently.  But hopefully, lovable.  

Mohs

 I just had Mohs surgery.  It is the fourth one on my face.  I may audition for the next remake of a Frankenstein movie.  Anyhow, it was right near my eye, on my nose.  So no stitches.  Pressure bandage for now.  Rest. Get fat and happy.  But for now, not so happy but doing ice and Tylenol.  I am paying the price for having Irish skin but spending way more time in the sun than I was meant for.  I used to think that a tan would make me beautiful and attractive to the girls. Instead, well, we have Frankenstein.  I guess a monastery is a good place to be when healing from skin surgery to the face.  And Covid makes us even more remote and isolated.  While I have more time now to pray for your spiritual well-being, you might consider care packages for a healing holy man.  That would be me.  Wear sunscreen and more rather than less clothes.  I just took a Tylenol.  Nightly night!

Whose Eyes

 If you always see yourself through the eyes of another, that could limit how you see yourself.  For instance, if a person of color always see themselves through the eyes of a white person, it might give them a limited notion of who they are, their value, worth and so on.  I might not be able to change the way people see me, but I can change the way I see myself.  If I wake up and say I am worthless, because someone else thinks that about me, then I am not going to have a very good day, and might act out this view of me.  I like my spiritual path because it says that I am worthwhile, precious and loved, even while I am asleep.  So when I wake up, even if no one would be reading my blogs, I am thankful before I get out of bed, for the love I am receiving.  Then I am more likely to get up and act lovingly and be of service to others because I value myself and them.  So if you say you are no good, through whose eyes did you learn that?  

Hidden Intention

 I can rather easily see what someone is doing or failing to do.  I can observe behavior, and of course then make a judgment about the behavior and the person.  What I do not notice is the intention behind the action or lack of action of the person I am observing.  So if you are thinking of taking punitive action or opening your mouth with a complaint, judgment, or accusation, you might first ask why someone acted the way that they did.  I usually say, "I notice that...I am wondering why you do that?"  They may not even have noticed whatever you say they did.  So if a child does not make their bed or brush their teeth, you might ask why, before you consider punitive action.  Motive and intention are hidden.  Only action is observed.  Sometimes people just forget.  Sometimes, it is such a long-standing habit, they do not even think about it.  This comes up when a married couple or partnership begin to live together.  For me, the better thing is just to keep my mouth shut around the monastery or in a rectory.  When intentions are revealed they can surprise me.  That, and I have given up hope in monks and priests.  

A Pardon

 You don't forgive or pardon another person who has done you an injustice so that they will do better or change for the better.  Generally, when you protest, or demand justice, the perpetrator stays the same.  For one thing, they don't see it at all your way.  So the reason I pardon another person is to heal the wound in my own heart.  You know when you have truly forgiven because you can feel your heart change to a more peaceful tenor.  I am not saying there is no place for anger, but don't expect it to change people who are treating you with an injustice.  Sometimes a person will have a change of heart who has been hurtful, but that takes time.  Maria Goretti forgave her killer as she was dying from his knife wounds.  He went to jail. Eventually, he saw the error of his ways.  He was present at her canonization.  Of course she was dead.  You don't always last long enough to see the fruits of forgiveness.  But I feel that you will know the results of your rage and anger rather more quickly, and it may not be so positive as you expected.  

Which More?

 There are several wisdom sayings that have as their theme, "more" can be problematic.  For instance, blessed are the poor and woe to the rich you hear in various spiritual circles and paths.  What is that all about?  I don't think that it is in praise of poverty in material stuff and money, or a condemnation of wealth per se.  I think it is about our goals no matter our circumstances in terms of material stuff.  Many people are unhappy with a lot and with a little.  The point upon which I focus is that wisdom is in becoming more and not in having more.  Be more of all you are meant to be in heart.  This includes love, compassion, empathy, sense of oneness with all beings.  No amount of things or lack of things is going to develop these interior qualities.  Today's "more" is that I have time to work on my focus.  Is it the interior life or the exterior stuff?  I need to find the balance so that I am truly working on becoming the better person.  So I start the day with some silence and then some solitude.  

The Rocker

I am grateful to the Shakers.  They came from England where they were persecuted for their ways.  Some thought they were Catholic because of their celibacy.  But I guess they were not too celibate as they are still around.  They were pacifists and believed in the equality of man and woman.  But I know they are around because they make wonderful furniture, like my Rocker.  I found the Rocker in East Tennessee.  it was delivered to the rectory where I lived in Knoxville.  It is still there in the guest room that is rarely used so the Rocker is still in good shape. I tested it out in March this year.  it fits me perfectly. It does not so much rock as moves back and forth on a pendulum and so does the foot rest.  It fits my more slender body, so fat priests don't much care for it.  There are people, things and places that we cherish that are far from us.  The memories stay though.  I would love to have my Rocker, but either I go live there or it comes to me, or I just keep the memory.  Have any good furniture you miss?  A good rocker is a tough thing to find.  So are good people that we never forget.